'The Internet makes Twits of us all'........

The headline for this blog post comes from the sign-off line in my blog of 23rd February, when I touched on the growing practice of Lawyers 'tweeting' about their cases from outside the courtroom. I'd heard about this on Radio 4's 'Law in Action', which was largely concerned with the Julian Assange case in that programme. Nothing new in that, you might say. After all, 'Tweeting' or 'Twittering' has been an accepted part of the news media for a while now. In fact, the Independent Newspaper prints a selection of daily Tweets, under the headline 'We follow them so you don't have to'. This itself is possibly implying that Tweeting is either an onerous activity; or one that Independent readers might not be choosing to do themselves, for other reasons (can't or won't is not implied).
What is more cause for concern is the growing practice of 'flogging' (i.e. 'fake blogging'), which my friend, who blogs as 'The Virtual Linguist' wrote about on 7th March. Link here  It describes the practice, which has now been identified and 'outlawed' in the US and is under review in this country. Examples have been highlighted in various news media, such as that of Liz Hurley, who is always (allegedly) tweeting about a certain brand of cosmetics, whilst carefully omitting the fact that she is paid to be the 'official face' of the company. The free online dictionary gives 'to market or sell aggressively' as the definition for 'flogging' and that is my own understanding of the original meaning of the word.From what I read, it seems that many companies are actively exploiting this aspect of the social media when they recruit young people to work for them. I guess it used to be called 'Public Relations' - a respectable occupation for reasonably intelligent, but primarily well-connected young people just out of college or finishing school. Substitute 'finishing school' for 'gap year' and you have almost the entire population of under 30's occupied in Social Marketing or Flogging.